The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays

Publisher's Summary

Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical conditions as medical problems and nondiseases as diseases, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to exposing the dangers of "medicalizing" the conditions of some who simply refuse to conform to society's expectations. Szasz argues that modern psychiatry's tireless ambition to explain the human condition has led to the treatment of life's difficulties and oddities as clinical illnesses rather than as humanity revealed in its fullness. This collection of impassioned essays, published between 1973 and 2006, chronicles the author's long campaign against the orthodoxies of psychiatry. From "Medicine to Magic" to "Medicine as Social Control", the audiobook delves into the fascinating history of medicalization, including "The Discovery of Drug Addiction", "Persecutions for Witchcraft and Drugcraft", and "Food Abuse and Foodaholism". In a society that has little tolerance for those who live outside its rules, Dr. Szasz's writings are as relevant today as ever.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful

Weird

This guy has never met a person with schizophrenia. He also speaks about abolishing the insanity plea without any critique of the prison industrial complex. Dr. Szasz, we are already living in a world where people with mentally illness languish in prison and suffer through poverty. Does this mean you were right?